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The West’s Quest to ‘Save the World Through Degeneracy’

Analysts of world affairs tend to fall into certain traps concerning the motivations and behavior of political actors. We consistently look at politicians’ electoral support, states’ access to resources, lines of offense or defense, traditional alliances and enmities, the profits of empowered interests, geography, demography, and many other objective factors.

But the subjective ideological, spiritual, and moral motivations that loom high in the self-conscious actions of movers and shakers are seldom given the attention they deserve. That is, what do the presidents, government ministers, military officers, bureaucrats, oligarchs, and NGO gurus themselves think they are doing when they advocate for or against a certain set of policies?

Sometimes the answers seem to make no sense at all in terms of the usual analyses of objective “interests.” The easiest resolution to such puzzles is usually found in Occam’s razor: just follow the money. Somebody, somewhere, is making a buck. Usually lots of bucks.

But even the money trail fails to answer some questions. For example, as part of their foreign policies why are western (North American and western European) governments, NGOs, etc., so insistent on demanding action on a “progressive” program to advance “gender” issues such as same-sex “marriage,” “transgenderism,” and so forth? After all, if Americans want to pump little kids full of “gender-reassignment” hormones, or if the citizens of (big surprise) California wish to subject kindergarten children to an abomination like “drag queen story hour,” that would be bad enough. Certainly in the fullness of time there will be enough millstones and depths of the sea, figuratively speaking, to give the culpable their just desserts. (By the way, can we please dispense with the notion that LGBTQI-etc. “recruitment” of children is just a paranoid fantasy of “haters”? If “drag queen story hour” isn’t recruitment into, first, a mindset, and then in at least some cases, participation – then what is it? America can be proud we don’t have evil laws like they have in Russia aimed at protecting children from “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relationships.” The brutes!)

The West’s demand for new, post-Christian social and moral values is a particular danger to some of the countries that emerged from communism in the 1990s. Paradoxically, given Marxism-Leninism’s claim to be the godless science of social progress, post-communist Central and Eastern Europe is generally far more traditional and – dare we say it? – Christian, if not particularly churchgoing, in its social conscience compared to the West. Perhaps that is because communist materialism was such a failure compared to consumerist materialism that the West provided much more fertile ground for transforming an ideology of class struggle into a struggle against the spiritual and moral values upon which society is rooted. The paradox is that today the roots of what was once quaintly known as Christendom are still relatively stronger in the East – and thus must be destroyed.

As it happens, there is a decades-old blueprint for imperialism based on sexual degeneracy. It is found in an unlikely place, the novel A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Written in 1963 but not published until 1980, the book takes its title from the epigram of Jonathan Swift’s essay, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

In this case, the genius in question is Toole’s fictional protagonist, the brilliant but lazy Ignatius J. Reilly (a disciple of the late-Roman philosopher Boethius), who encounters on the streets of his native New Orleans a member of what today would be called a sexual minority. The chance meeting sparks in Reilly a bold, revolutionary burst of insight that fits so well into our contemporary world that it’s hard to believe it’s a depiction from over half a century ago. There’s no proof that this passage was in fact the inspiration for our present-day fanatics of imperialist gender revolution, but the stunning parallels, including a call for regime change in “reactionary countries,” speak for themselves:

‘As I was wearing the soles of my desert boots down to a mere sliver of crepe rubber on the old flagstone banquettes of the French Quarter in my fevered attempt to wrest a living from an unthinking and uncaring society, I was hailed by a cherished old acquaintance (deviate). After a few minutes of conversation in which I established most easily my moral superiority over this degenerate, I found myself pondering once more the crises of our times. My mentality, uncontrollable and wanton as always, whispered to me a scheme so magnificent and daring that I shrank from the very thought of what I was hearing. “Stop!” I cried imploringly to my godlike mind. “This is madness.” But still I listened to the counsel of my brain. It was offering me the opportunity to Save the World Through Degeneracy. There on the worn stones of the Quarter I enlisted the aid of this wilted flower of a human in gathering his associates in foppery together behind a banner of brotherhood.

‘Our first step will be to elect one of their number to some very high office — the presidency, if Fortuna spins us kindly. Then they will infiltrate the military. As soldiers, they will all be so continually busy in fraternizing with one another, tailoring their uniforms to fit like sausage skins, inventing new and varied battle dress, giving cocktail parties, etc., that they will never have time for battle. The one whom we finally make Chief of Staff will want only to attend to his fashionable wardrobe, a wardrobe which, alternately, will permit him to be either Chief of Staff or debutante, as the desire strikes him. In seeing the success of their unified fellows here, perverts around the world will also band together to capture the military in their respective countries. In those reactionary countries in which the deviates seem to be having some trouble in gaining control, we will send aid to them as rebels to help them in toppling their governments. When we have at last overthrown all existing governments, the world will enjoy not war but global orgies conducted with the utmost protocol and the most truly international spirit, for these people do transcend simple national differences. Their minds are on one goal; they are truly united; they think as one.

‘None of the pederasts in power, of course, will be practical enough to know about such devices as bombs; these nuclear weapons would lie rotting in their vaults somewhere. From time to time the Chief of Staff, the President, and so on, dressed in sequins and feathers, will entertain the leaders, i.e., the perverts, of all the other countries at balls and parties. Quarrels of any sort could easily be straightened out in the men’s room of the redecorated United Nations. Ballets and Broadway musicals and entertainments of that sort will flourish everywhere and will probably make the common folk happier than did the grim, hostile, fascistic pronouncements of their former leaders.

‘Almost everyone else has had an opportunity to run the world. I cannot see why these people should not be given their chance. They have certainly been the underdog long enough. Their movement into power will be, in a sense, only a part of the global movement toward opportunity, justice, and equality for all; (For example, can you name one good, practicing transvestite in the Senate? No! These people have been without representation long enough. Their plight is a national, a global disgrace.)

‘Degeneracy, rather than signaling the downfall of a society, as it once did, will now signal peace for a troubled world. We must have new solutions to new problems.’